The Intelligence Estimate

I don't get weekends at this job. Well, that's not entirely true...I just don't get them on actual weekends. I get like a Wednesday-Thursday off and we CALL it a weekend. The cool thing about that (if there is one) is that I get to do things when no one else is there. Like yesterday I went to a matinee of the new Robert Redford film. Well, you know who goes to weekday matinees? Old people. Old, rich, ill-mannered jerks to be more precise. They talk through the movie, they complain about the food, they're constantly adjusting their hearing aids so all I hear is a constant squeeling.

I'm gonna shift gears here for a minute, follow me. I'm going somewhere with this. You ever notice how often a thermometer in a theater gets checked? A lot. Every ten minutes it seems like someone is coming in with a flashlight to check the temperature. It's like a science experiment for those ushers.

"Our research has determined that Jerry Breuckheimer movies are best served at a temperature oh 14 degrees fehrenheit...that way the audience is too distracted by frostbite to notice the gaping wholes in the plot!"

So I didn't notice at first when some lady was messing with the thermostat. I only noticed when she started pressing buttons and the thing started beeping. I thought, "clearly this usher is new on the job." Then the woman walks right past me and takes her seat. She didn't work at the theater, she was just a patron. An old, rich patron who thought that the theater was too cold and that everyone deserved to be at HER temperature.